No Taxation Without Representation

Residents of DC may finally get a vote in the House under a compromise plan that was reintroduced in the Congress today.

The D.C. House Voting Rights Act will be reintroduced by Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democrat and the District's non-voting House member, and Sens. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican.

The legislation would give one House vote to the District and a fourth one to Utah, which narrowly missed getting an additional seat after the last U.S. Census. Utah, which traditionally leans to the right politically, now has one Democrat and two Republicans in the House and is the next to receive a new seat based on the last census.

"Men and women of the District have fought bravely in our wars, many giving their lives in defense of our country, yet they have no vote on the serious questions of war and peace," Mr. Lieberman said.

If the bill makes it through Congress, it will increase the number of House members for the first time in 96 years.

Obama was a co-sponsor of this bill in the last Congress. He would support it, and with expanded numbers in the Senate, where it got 57 votes the last time around, I would guess that it has a very good chance of passage.

It's absurd that it's taken this long and requires this compromise with Utah. DC got electoral college representation in 1961, and a voting rights Constitutional amendment passed the Congress in 1978 (it failed to get 3/4 of the states to ratify within the seven-year window). It's absurd that we have 581,000 Americans with no voting representation in Congress. If 580,000 white people in Oklahoma were being denied voting rights, you can bet this would have been cleared up by now.

If anything, the proposal isn't bold enough. To rebut the Constitutionality claims, you could give DC statehood and create a small federal district around the White House and government buildings that wouldn't disenfranchise a single American. DC has more residents than Wyoming, so it's not an exceptional scenario. If that was too politically thorny you could retrocede that portion into Virginia or Maryland, and create the same federal district. Furthermore, since the House hasn't expanded their ranks in 96 years and yet the population has doubled many times over, it would make a lot of sense to expand the Congress to 500 members or more, to put the representatives closer to the people they represent.

But this bill at the very least would be an improvement and a victory for democracy. What is being done right now is unconscionable.

The Power Of One Man

This activist Tim DeChristopher, who bidded up parcels of land sought by oil and gas interests for drilling is really a hero. I guess the Bureau of Land Management was all upset because an auction broke out at their nice little auction.

The process was thrown into chaos and the bidding halted for a time before the auction was closed, with 116 parcels totaling 148,598 acres having sold for $7.2 million plus fees.

"He's tainted the entire auction," said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah.

Hoffman said buyers will have 10 days to reconsider and withdraw their bids if they think they paid too much.

Huh? Paid TOO MUCH? If a buyer is paying millions of dollars for oil-rich land, they obviously think it's worth it. What DeChristopher did was prove that the BLM was giving away federal land, basically owned by the taxpayers, to noncompetitive interests at obscenely low rates, and that the bidders would clearly pay more if forced. I thought these capitalists believed in the free market?

Now, DeChristopher did win some auctions, about 22,500 acres' worth, and he fully intends not to pay. Then again, this is hardly different from the oil companies who buy up these lands with no intention of using them, just to pad their stock price. The oil companies get enough tax breaks to cancel out their below-market payments for the land, and it merely becomes an asset in their list of oil reserves. It's the same thing.

Selma Sierra, who heads the BLM in Utah, said only 6 percent of lease parcels would ever see drilling because of the "costly and speculative" nature of the business. The federal government also typically imposes environmental safeguards on drilling parcels, Sierra said.

In other words, "Drill here, drill now" is a fiction. Thanks to this BLM official for making it so clear.

Considering how rapidly we're experiencing the effects of climate change, and considering how long this oil company racket has lasted without anyone inside or outside the government stepping up, I'd call this perfectly justified. Not only should the government drop charges against DeChristopher, they should thank him for resetting the market. And activists can learn a lot from the creativity of this guy.

Marriage Equality: A Movement In Search Of A Campaign

The numerous issues inside the No on 8 campaign, and their disappointing mismanagement, has finally bubbled up into the traditional media (we were talking about it a week ago). The SacBee writes about the trouble at the top:

Key staff members – including the campaign manager – were replaced in the final weeks as polls turned dramatically against the No side. Their replacements say they found an effort that was too timid, slow to react, without a radio campaign or a strategy to reach out to African Americans, a group that ultimately supported the measure by more than 2 to 1.

Gay marriage supporters are looking to the courts to overturn the decision. But if another political campaign is waged, said Dennis Mangers, co-chairman of the No on 8 Northern California Committee, "we'll have to do better."

No on 8 campaign manager Steve Smith was shoved aside three weeks before Election Day, after he was slow to counter TV ads in which the measure's supporters claimed that same-sex marriage would be promoted in schools if the measure failed.

And Smith was replaced by a committee - half the consultant class in Sacramento went through the revolving door of that campaign. And they set about to answer unchallenged ads from the Yes campaign and get on radio. But the message remained somewhat timid, and the campaign didn't put much effort into minority outreach or field operations. Late volunteers were told to go out on a street corner and wave signs.

What's remarkable is that the best activism and creativity I've seen from the LGBT community in years has come in the immediate AFTERMATH of this vote. The talent was out there, but wasn't channeled during the campaign. Activists are using wiki-based technology to set up a national day of action on November 15 called The Impact. A comedy troup in LA used the Yes campaign's own words to "advocate" for prohibiting divorce.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

And Utah lawmakers are turning the tables on the Mormon church by using their alleged tolerance to make major advances for gay rights in the Beehive State:

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have said they do not object to rights for same-sex couples, as long as those rights do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family.

Now, gay-rights activists and at least five Utah legislators are asking the Church to demonstrate its conviction.

The group Equality Utah says the Church made the invitation, and they're accepting it. "The LDS Church says it does not oppose same-sex couples receiving such rights as hospitalization and medical care, fair housing rights or probate rights," said Mike Thompson, executive director of Equality Utah.

These actions are useful to the future of marriage equality nationwide, and could be the backbone of a smarter, more grassroots movement. Why were they not tapped at all for the No on 8 campaign?

Yesterday, Connecticut granted marriage equality to all its citizens, offering a glimmer of hope. I am convinced that justice will eventually prevail. But you have to treat the campaign like a campaign, and use the assets at your disposal.

Hey, At Least We Had a Satan-Free Convention

I know there was a lot of bad blood coming out of how the CDP Convention wrapped up, but consider this: that controversy was over how we passed one resolution on Iraq and not another. It's not like it was about something like this:

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan’s minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants “hate American people” and “are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won’t do.”

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to “destroy Christian America” and replace it with “a godless new world order — and that is not extremism, that is fact,” Larsen said. […]

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as “Joe,” said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because “they are not going to become Republicans….”

No matter what the intra-party squabbles are, let's understand that the real whackadoos are in that other party. We can resolve differences between ourselves as reasonable people. We don't think Satan is an undocumented immigrant.

Another thing to consider: one of the resolutions that the CDP passed yesterday was in support of high-speed rail, which we learned yesterday that the governor may be trying to defund and effectively stop. One of the resolutions we DIDN'T pass was in support of Clean Money, which actually is moving through the legislative process, with a hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. So resolutions pale in comparison to what's really happening in Sacramento. Just a little perspective.